Ridiculous by Charlie Peck
Poetry editor Sara Daniels on today’s poem: In “Ridiculous,” Charlie Peck marries quotidian absurdities—stealing take-out, washing salt from a car bumper—with nostalgia. His work drips with sensory details that preserve the past: a meal shared with friends, a bowl of lime juice and paprika. But even as the speaker reaches back, Peck keeps us outside of full resurrection. We are positioned on the cold riverbank of the present, made aware—through Peck’s precise language and imagery—of how the ridiculous infuses memory with humor and meaning alike, and how humans are tasked with the absurd: to figure out how to carry the past without ever being able to step back into it.
Ridiculous
The whole damn thing: the sun overhead splits
magnolia branches into coy shadows
on the riverbank, and no matter how gorgeous
this day started, I stroll the streets like a little boy
who broke a vase and won’t go home until day
throws in the towel and night pokes her head in.
I knew this guy in college who rolled
his car while drunk, climbed out the window,
and skittered off into the night. He was a bad
roommate, living with Jay then, who’d come home
to find a piece of furniture sold, leftover take-out vanished.
I like to squint and peer as far into that life as I can,
my kaleidoscope brain turning it all into great fun,
and the past is a place I’ll always turn to because all
my good friends are still back there, washing dishes
for the mid-shift and playing darts at The Leon Pub.
I wanted to live like that forever: sudsing the salt lick
from the bumper of my car, riding my bicycle
down the boardwalk to the fish stand to buy
grouper filets on ice, bringing them home to a bowl
of lime juice and paprika, another taco night
on the Gulf. The moon getting bigger every year,
and my God just look at it. That dull gut ache
for things that won’t happen again, today
I say no to it, hands in my pockets as the breeze
stirs up. I’m happy this stupid grin is the one I get
to wear for the rest of my life, or until my teeth
fall out and I can disappoint my dead dentist
grandfather, his whole life a chain of root canals
and workshop stained-glass. Time to suck it up,
go home. The truth of it that so long as I ramble
alone, I can avoid that empty house, the couch
whose one cushion sags because it’s where I sit,
the street noises of people together leaking in.
If I stand here long enough, I can imagine
the dinner party – slow braised short ribs and fine
wine, a whole table of smiling friends.
Charlie Peck is from Omaha, Nebraska. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, The Journal, Ninth Letter, and POETRY, among others. His first collection, World’s Largest Ball of Paint (2024), received the 2022 St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press.
